What to do when you have too much to do...
RobotDucky’s profile

Why I’m Here

I came here looking for a way to focus on my extensive backlog of games. It has become increasingly difficult to use Steam Categories in the library to prioritize my games. I generally have given up choosing a game to beat or complete and instead just play from a selection of games that I always play.

Some of these are, however, my favorite games. I always enjoy these games and haven’t cared that the backlog grew as a result. With scenes like this how can you not be ok playing a relaxing game instead of staring at a backlog of unplayed games?

Screenshot from theHunter
Timbergold Trails Reserve

What Happened to My Library

Well, I have begun to wish I never found out about bundles. This was the biggest disaster my backlog has ever seen. I’ve gotten several gems that I never would have looked at otherwise. So, i’m glad about those but the rest has just piled up on my backlog.

The other contribution to the growth of my library has been some great holiday sales. Especially the 2012 holiday & summer sales. My library really grew that year before bundle binging even picked up.

My Plan

I hope to use this site to gain some ground on playing my backlog and at least beating more of my games. I’ve gotten the hang of these lists. So far, they have been very effective in helping me focus on a handful of games (limiting myself to 10 playing now). This won’t preclude playing other games when I want but when I can’t decide I now have a small list to focus on. I’ve been able to setup other lists to prioritize games on what I actually want to play and what I have a shot at beating/completing.

Game Progress Updates

Beaten/Completed Games

I have beaten the single player story and the single player DLC that is currently out. I keep replaying parts of the game trying to get different challanges and achievements. I will likely keep playing this one for a while.

The story was good and flowed nicely to the next mission. Honestly, the challenges for missions and weapons are what keeps me playing. The game controls are good and equipment selection is improved over the older Sniper Elite games.

Now I just need to get some of my friends to stop being busy and play some co-op.

This game was just not developed well. The idea was nice. You get to race classic cars. Sadly that was where the "nice" ended.

I'll just get right to the bad now.1. The opponents drive right through traffic unless you are right next to them. 2. The oppenents randomly do stupid stuff like turning off the road. 3. The opponents glitch all over the map behind you as if the game is trying to force them to catch up. 4. Once you level up, it keeps adding the last "special" car to your garage. I have more than a dozen of that one car now and every race I win another one appears. This makes finding cars in your garage difficult. 5. The graphics keep flickering and dissapearing on the landscape around you. At the end of one of the races the whole road and surrounding environment dissapear totally. You see the cars finishing after you driving over thin air.

There is probably more I could think of, but that should be enough to support my not recommending this game to anyone. I'll go after the last achievement only because it's easy, if grindy, to complete the game. After that I'll likely never touch it again.

So, I won this on Steamgifts before the first level went free. All I have is One level to play and beat. Since it was a Steamgifts win, I thought I should at least play that one level to completion. That is exactly what I did and why it is marked beaten in my book.

This is a surprisingly nice point and click adventure so far. I was a little concerned with the switching between now and the past that it does. This, however, worked really well in pushing the story along.

Now I just need to get the rest of the game so I can see how it really plays out.

Games I have beaten since my last update

I decided to play this for the Monthly Theme. I had started it a long time ago but didn’t get far, so it seemed like a good choice.

The game was good and seemed to follow the story fairly well. There were some good humorous moments that is typical of LEGO games. I only really played the story and didn’t explore much or do many side quests. There are plenty of side quests to do but I didn’t find any great motivation to do them. I wanted to experience the Lord of the Rings story.

I did get stuck on a couple places not knowing what I was supposed to do. I also had a couple crashes even after I got my computer fixed and reloaded. But none of this was too bad to detract much from the game.

Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to any LEGO video game fans. Maybe if the world and side quests were more enticing I would have been more impressed.

This is a very sad tab to create

I tried to play this one. It looked good. A rather simple play style typical of what may come from a port of a mobile game. The whole fantasy theme looked nice.

Sadly it would not work without major problems. Part way through the level the sound would stop in the game. Then there was an issue that I could get through 2 levels and then the game would get stuck at the claim your reward screen.
I would have to end the task and try the level again only to get stuck at the end of the next level. Looking in the game forums it appears to be a known issue with no real workaround.

I will give it a try on another computer when I can but for now it goes into the sad bin of Won't Play for technical issues.

March Update #1

This post has been about a week coming for me. My computer has been acting up for some time now with crashing and bluescreens. Recently it has gotten much worse, so I’ve been trying to troubleshoot that so I can get back to playing instead of working.

I was really hoping to have beaten the story in Guacamelee! before I posted this, but no. I think I’m really close to the end though. It is turning out to be better than I thought it would be. The Talos Principle is probably taking longer than it should to beat, but I’m trying to find all the stars and any hidden things I can.

I’m also still trying to work my way through all the levels of Dead Man’s Draw, 8-Bit Armies & Marble Duel when I can.

This month I’m looking forward to getting some LEGO games beaten for the months theme. That is, if my computer can stop crashing.

Games I have beaten since my last update

This Game is difficult to say it was good or bad. The premise of the story was a good idea. The ending was touching, sad & happy. Yes, it was all three for me.

As good an idea as Beyond Eyes was and the touching ending, it was severely marred by the gameplay. I wasn’t sure exactly where to go in the game. You get occasional cues you’re on the right track, but if you stray the wrong way it can be very frustrating. To add to the frustration your walking speed is so very slow. It makes playing feel like a chore.

I’m glad it’s done now. I usually don’t look at achievements before playing a game as there can often be spoilers in the achievements. In the end, the only achievement I got was for completing the story. That may very well be the only achievement I have in this game for now. I don’t plan on trying to get the others any time soon.

I really wanted to like this one because the idea was really interesting, but the gameplay ruined the fun for me.

Games I have completed since my last update

Portal 2 is now 100% for me. Thanks to Daerphen for the hug to get Friends List With Benefits and escollo, again, for help with the Professor Portal achievement. And thanks to all those that offered to help with the last achievements.

I previosly wrote about my thoughts on Portal 2 in my previous post here if your interested.

I've also been playing LEGO Dimensions on the PS4. Recently I got the Portal 2 Level Pack and played through the level. If you enjoyed the Portal games, this is a nice additional story. It takes place some time after Portal 2 with Chell and GlaDOS at it again. If you don't have LEGO Dimensions and don't plan on getting it, then I suggest you check out a play through of the level on youtube just for the story. I'm currently playing in the Portal 2 world and finding it very interesting to solve the puzzles.

This was a quick game to play at about an hour to complete. There are no achievements and a very simple goal. You run without stopping or slowing, having to jump to avoid hazards and using your Sword and Kunai to kill enemies.

I normally don't do well with these kind of games anymore. So, I actually enjoyed playing it when I was able to get through the levels as quickly as I was.

It can get a bit repetitive in that similar level designs show up. I could swear some of them are just copies of previous levels with an extra enemy or two. The story, if you want to accept that the games premise is a story, is very poor and the game could easily do without the end scenes. Even though I had fun with it, I rated it kinda low because of all this.

February Update

This is my first progress report of sorts. I’ll probably tweak how I do this over the next few updates until I’m happy with it. I’m also not much for written reviews and such but I’m going to try really hard to talk about my experience playing each game and what I thought of the game.

Game Progress Updates

These are games I'm working on beating or completing

Portal 2

Dead Man's Draw

Melody's Escape

Ultimate General: Gettysburg

The Talos Principle

8-Bit Armies

Portal 2

45 hours playtime

50 of 51 achievements

Portal 2 and its predecessor, Portal, are among my favorite games of all time. I recently finished playing through the co-op with a friend at work. It’s just a shame it took me so many years to finally play co-op but I'm happy I finally did.

Now I’ve just been trying to get all the achievements. Thanks to escollo I have the Professor Portal achievement. Now I’m just one away. I am in need of a hug. If anyone would be so kind as to give me a hug in Portal 2, I would really appreciate it.

Other than that Portal 2 has been a great game worthy of the first Portal game. The inclusion of co-op has been a wonderful new adventure to go on. The way they incorporated the story of the single player part with the co-op part was really nice. Now that I’ve completed the co-op part it really feels like a complete story.

GLaDOS truly is the villain most in need of a hug. (As I said, I could still use one too.)

Dead Man's Draw

16 hours playtime

15 of 20 achievements

This is a very nice casual game to play. It’s a rather simple game of pushing your luck with some strategy to it. There are a lot of levels to work through and you gain XP as you play to unlock more abilities to use in the game.

I’m currently working my way through all the levels with the hopes of being able to complete this game with all achievements. It’s taking a while and trying to convince the computer to just let me win is not going well.

One thing that would make this game even more fun to play would be multiplayer. A real person would be better than always playing the computer.

There was even a Kickstarter that brought out a physical game for 1-4 players. Dead Man’s Draw KS. Sadly, that’s on my backlog as well.

Melody's Escape

5 hours playtime

5 of 8 achievements

I really enjoy music games. Audiosurf is one of my favorite games. When I saw Melody’s Escape on early access I decided to give it a shot.

I wasn’t disappointed with it in any way. It plays a lot like Guitar Hero where you have to hit the right button at the right time as Melody runs by that color icon. This isn’t too difficult on the more casual game modes but can get really challenging on the higher difficulties. There is a game mode to suit all play styles.

I’m currently trying to get some of the remaining achievements I have. Unfortunately these are for the most difficult game modes.

Ultimate General: Gettysburg

5 hours playtime

2 of 3 achievements

In my effort to get more 100% complete games I thought I would try to get the one last achievement I needed for Ultimate General: Gettysburg. I really like this game when I first played it so I thought it was a great idea to go back to it.

There are only three achievement for the game. The only one I am missing is for winning as the Confederate Army. How hard could that be? Well, I’ve come to the realization that the Confederate Army just isn’t meant to win the battle of Gettysburg. Not under my command at least.

I am going to keep trying for the last achievement, but likely won't mention the game again until I have it completed. I am going to leave the game marked as beaten. After all, I played as the Union Army and won the battle. Then I played as the Confederate Army and lost the battle. That turns into a fairly accurate account of history, therefore, game beaten.

Speaking of the game itself, it is a really good strategy game that I enjoyed. The battlefield is not too big that you’ll be guaranteed to lose track of you soldiers. The progression of the battles plays out very well. The graphics are really nice and the colors work well to help identify your units and the terrain.

The Talos Principle

7 hours playtime

11 of 40 achievements

I haven’t really played this much since last month and I need to get back to it before I start forgetting the story. Fingers crossed I get back in and beat the game soon.

I got The Talos Principle because it was a lot like Portal. There looked to be a great story and puzzles as you progress through the game. I won’t comment much on the story as I’m still working my way through the game but I will say it is revealed in interesting ways so far.

The puzzles, so far, have been great. You start out with simple ones but then they start getting more challenging. New devices get added to the puzzles every so often keeping it all from feeling repetitive.

8-Bit Armies

6 hours playtime

0 of 29 achievements

What can I say about 8-Bit Armies? It’s like the great classic RTS games of old, but it’s new. This plays a lot like one of my favorites, Command & Conquer. It is in no way a replacement for C&C though. 8-Bit Armies stand very well on its own so far.

Obviously it has its own graphics style that is presented very well. I’m not a big fan of the repeated 8-bit graphics in a lot of games lately, but it fits in very well in this game.

The missions have not been too difficult or too easy either. They have been a good mix but I’ve only played though 22 of the Renegades missions. I’m hoping the rest of the game keeps going as well. I’ve got the other 8-Bit games to play after this.

The interesting thing is that I’ve managed to get no achievements so far. I have not really looked at the achievements closely yet. I feel that ruins some games so I usually only look after I’m done the story.

Game I have beaten since my last update

Dear Esther: Landmark Edition

Dear Esther: Landmark Edition

2 hours playtime

7 of 10 achievements

I played the original release of Dear Esther and really liked it. Beautiful scenery and music. It was one of the first “walking simulator” games, if not the first. There is very limited interaction with the world but the way the story unfolds makes it worth the play through.

Now that Dear Esther: Landmark Edition is released the developer was kind enough to give owners of the original a copy of this edition. Admittedly, it has been a long time since I played the original but I do like some of the upgrades that came with porting the game to the Unity Game Engine. Some of the reflectiveness seems a bit too much at times, but the colors in some scenes can be so vibrant. It looks beautiful and the soundtrack is still amazing.

I don’t want to talk about the story as I feel it would spoil playing the game and I recommend playing this one. It will make you think as you try to piece the story together and that is this games strongest point.

Game I have completed since my last update

Party Hard

The Lords of the Earth Flame

Bridge Constructor Medieval

Party Hard

24 hours playtime

27 of 27 achievements

Party Hard was one of those gotta have it games. I think it was just released and I read the description of what could be an amazing game. What sold me, I think, was the fact that the only goal is to kill everyone. I know that doesn’t sound too healthy, but after a long day at work this can be an amazing stress reliever.

At its heart Party Hard is a strategy game with heavy emphasis on stealth. You do have to think on occasion about how you can kill everyone without getting caught. It takes patience and some determination.

As you progress you unlock other characters that you can then use on prior levels to try something different. If you’re a completionist you will be going back and doing this. And if you just think it’s awesome finding new and different ways of killing everyone at the party, then you will very likely be going back with each character.

If you’ve read this far and think, wow that sounds like fun, then you should definitely get Party Hard and get to partying.

The Lords of the Earth Flame

79 minutes playtime

13 of 13 achievements

SteamGifts Win

This game looked like it had some good nostalgia for me. I used to love the Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was growing up. The Lords of the Earth Flame is a game that is done in a very similar fashion to those books.

For me this game was a bit of a disappointment. I do think it is a good game for what it is. It’s just too short and for a choose your own adventure it was too linear. You either had a really fast good or bad ending or you made it to one of the longer stories multiple endings. Now the path to the longer stories had multiple choices. That was good, but they all took you through the same middle part of the story. This took away from the feeling of choosing my own path for me. That’s where my disappointment came in.

I like it, but I think I’m going to have to look to a different game to find that nostalgic feeling of the classic Choose Your Own Adventure stories. Any recommendations???

Bridge Constructor Medieval

10 hours playtime

14 of 14 achievements

I liked Bridge Constructor Medieval up until I tried to get 100% achievements. Ok, so I still do like it but solving some of these puzzles within the restrictions of getting all gold stars was maddening. For some of the levels it felt like there was only one solution and you had to find it to get gold.

Other than the aggravation (really challenging levels), I found the game enjoyable. Building the bridges to get the soldiers across was a nice change to cars and trucks. Building bridges with the intent to fail so bad guys fall to their doom was better.

One issue I had with the game is the inconsistent physics. You can build a bridge that isn’t quite right to survive getting the soldiers across that will fail. But if you don’t change anything and have the soldiers try a few times they may make it over by the third or fourth time. If it is running the same simulation every time then the physics, I think, should behave the same each time.

If you’re just looking to solve the level, it isn’t too hard. If you want all gold, be prepared for a challenge.

My First Goal

Hello All,

I have just started with the site this month. I think I have gotten myself fairly organized to start beating back this backlog. It has taken me most of the month to get organized so I am going to set my goal for the end of February a bit early. It’s the first goal, so I’ll take the head start.

I have been looking at what to do as far as a short term goal. This is where I noticed that on my profile there is a 0% next to completed games. I had two completed games as of joining and this month I have finished off one more. I figured out that I should need to hit 28 completed games (100% achievements) to make it to 1%. I also realize that I may have games that don’t have achievements that are technically complete. I’m sure there are some that I have played every possible piece of the game but that would require remembering what ones those would be. So for now I’m planning on just going for 100% achievements.

In the effort to get there I have set myself a goal to try and finish all achievements for these seven games. Seven is supposed to be lucky, so maybe I’ll be able to get these seven done by the end of next month. I realize that these games are close to being complete, but that’s why I picked them. I’d like to have a good shot at meeting my first goal.

Games To Complete for February

Party Hard

22 hours playtime

24 of 27 achievements

Portal 2

37 hours playtime

46 of 51 achievements

Dead Man's Draw

9 hours playtime

14 of 20 achievements

Melody's Escape

5 hours playtime

5 of 8 achievements

Ultimate General: Gettysburg

3 hours playtime

2 of 3 achievements

Bridge Constructor Medieval

4 hours playtime

7 of 14 achievements

The Lords of the Earth Flame

16 minutes playtime

5 of 13 achievements

In the course of playing other games that I simply want to play and beat I do have a side goal for February. I’d like to at least beat a few games on my playing now list. So I’m going to try to focus on beating these few games for next month as well.

Games to Beat in February

The Talos Principle

7 hours playtime

11 of 40 achievements

8-Bit Armies

5 hours playtime

0 of 29 achievements

Escape Goat

4 hours playtime

1 of 16 achievements

That’s all for now. I hope I haven’t set my first goals too high, but I do have a bit of a head start on all of them.

I would also just like to say thanks for having this site and community. I’m looking forward to pushing through this game backlog of mine.